Visa Application To Be Available Online Before March 1st
The Federal Government has announced that all visa applications will be processed online starting March 1. Minister of Interior Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo made this announcement on Monday, January 20, during an interactive session hosted on ‘X Spaces’ by influencer Dr. Segun Awosanya.
In highlighting the improvements in the visa approval process, the minister noted the creation of a centralized visa approval center aimed at enhancing national security, ensuring consistency, and reducing corruption.
“The visa approval center is also an achievement for this administration because we also now have a centralized visa approval center,” he said. “This will stem corruption, ensure national security, and merge the visa regime to ensure uniformity. Before March 1st, all visa application systems will be online to ensure proper vetting.”
Dr. Tunji-Ojo also discussed the establishment of a harmonized data center, which is located at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Technology Innovation Complex (BATTIC) within the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) headquarters in Sauka, Abuja.
“We were able to build one of the biggest data centers in the history of Nigeria, which is the 8.3-petabyte center,” he said. “Before then, we had an issue because we inherited a Nigeria Immigration Service that had no data center, where the data of Nigerians was obviously being saved in private capacities with various contractors, and that was a gross contravention of the Data Protection Act.”
The minister emphasized the importance of consolidating Nigeria’s security document issuance processes to comply with due process and data protection standards.
“Nigeria cannot proliferate the issuance of its security document because it is a gross violation of due process,” he explained. “We decided to find a lasting solution to that, and we started by promising Nigerians a 1.4-petabyte data center, but we ended up delivering an 8.3-petabyte data center—one of the largest in the world.”
